“Babygirl” Poster.
Courtesy | Amazon
Nobody puts Baby in the corner — unless you’re Samuel, the 20-something intern having an affair with tech CEO Romy Mathis in the erotic thriller “Babygirl.”
Patrick Swayze practically glows in the most famous scene from “Dirty Dancing” (1987) when he frees Baby from her stuffy family. But “Babygirl” subverts this. Samuel (Harris Dickenson) places Romy (Nicole Kidman) into a corner when they meet up in a hotel room at the beginning of their illicit affair.
Instead of some cinematic display of liberation, “Babygirl” spends much of its screentime revealing that the only “baby” to be seen is Samuel, the supposed sexual authority of the film itself.
As most horror stories begin, Romy is dissatisfied with her terribly happy, terribly mundane marriage. She has a doting husband, Jacob, who supports her despite her workaholic tendencies and reaches for her when she becomes compulsively withdrawn during intimacy. The couple has two children, and the eldest daughter behaves equally as unfaithfully as her mother.
Far more compelling to the middle-aged business mogul is the intern stud who at the beginning of the film tames a feisty dog on the street. Romy is spellbound from that point on, and director Halina Reijn beats viewers over the head for the rest of the film with a very simple, mildly sensual assertion: Romy wants to be tamed.
Thus launches a secret entanglement alchemized from carnal chemistry with few romantic or sincere strings attached.
For all the movie’s plot pitfalls, Reijn masters Samuel as a character. He entrances both viewers and Romy with his brief glimpses of confidence and charming boyishness. Samuel is handsome, reserved, patient, and observant. He is also in his early twenties. Each erotic line is accompanied by an unsure smirk or laugh, cutting moments that remind both the audience and Romy that Samuel is insecure in his dominant role.
Samuel delivers his mad-libs-esque lines like a tired preteen. With each step towards domination, he trips on the laces of his boyhood. He throws tantrums when upset, stonewalls Romy when she tries to end the relationship, and threatens to expose their affair.
The most compelling scene of the film is not when Romy laps milk up from a small dish at Samuel’s feet or strips naked while he watches. It’s a different climax — the depressing one where Romy’s husband stumbles into their fireside romance.
After fighting, Jacob and Samuel exchange a strangely progressive conversation about sexual politics: the loving husband suggesting that female masochism is a male fantasy, and the other man arguing that this is a “dated” way of thinking about sexuality. Jacob begins to have a panic attack, and Samuel effectively tames him just like his wife.
This is the best scene of the film, a heart wrenching exploration of a complicated woman whose only straightforward trait is her blatant narcissism.
Jacob stares up at Samuel from his seat on the floor, the same perspective Romy shared for much of the film, though this time lacking in any tone of eroticism. But much like his wife, Jacob begs Samuel for answers as well: the key to making sense of his wife, the answer on to how to please her, or anything he can do to keep her.
Romy wants to be degraded to the status of a dog, a device used to reveal her true desires after long days of heading a massive company on the rise. Her affair represents her desire to relinquish control, to let another person make decisions for her. It enables Romy to become the very robot she’s spent her life building to do others’ dirty work.
What’s left is a deeply uncomfortable and, at most times, laughable display of a sloppy affair with no lasting consequences. Aside from a devastating conversation or two, those in power stay in power, and those who inconvenience that dynamic are conveniently shipped away. The loyal husband reads the Bible and not only finds a way to forgive Romy, but even tries to fulfill her supposedly “dark” fantasies that are more mundane than the average “Bridgerton” episode.
On paper, “Babygirl” would’ve read the way it’s intended to be received: a steamy thriller about control, power, and female pleasure in a progressive society. Literary confines would’ve propelled the story to new heights and enabled the writers to position it more deeply in a cultural conversation about sexual politics. But when translated to film, the story loses much of the magnetism it wastes vital plot space trying to kindle.
What “Babygirl” lacks in plot, character depth, and substance, it surely makes up for in comedically loud sex scenes, awkward camera angles, and not one iota of true accountability.